PN 78–21

Prep Volume 78, Issue 21

“If nothing else, value the truth”

News sluh.org/prepnews

St. Louis University High School | Friday, March 28, 2014

Robotics Rebooted photo | courtesy of Eric Berg

Group Profile Global Education

BY Jack Kiehl CORE STAFF

G

lobal Education, one of the six visioning groups for the strategic planning process, Imagining 18, has set its goals: providing SLUH students with “knowledge and understanding of culture, lan-

guage, geography, and global perspectives,” according to the Imagining 18 website.

The group, co-chaired by history teacher Tom Zinselmeyer and Michael McDonough, ’92, is looking at how SLUH will incorporate global education by its 200th anniversary.

According to McDonough, global education refers to various aspects of curriculum mainly concering foreign language and cultural integration.

continued on page 5

SLUH to admit female students in 2018 Robotics Rebooted: Members of SLUH’s Robotics team prepare their robot to compete in the FIRST Robotics competition at Chaifetz Arena. This competition cements the revival of the team, which had been dormant for several years. For more on the club and the competition, see p. 2 of this week’s Prep News.

Fields advances as Missouri poetry champ

BY Stephen Lumetta NEWS EDITOR

R

unners-up in competitions dream of becoming the champions if they have a chance the following year, but few do. One of those few, though, is senior Tom Fields, who won State at Poetry Out Loud in Jefferson City on March 13.

Fields, who had placed second in last year’s State competition, performed three poems: “The Way It Sometimes Is” by Henry Taylor, “Sestina: Like”, by A.E. Stallings, and “The Canonization”

by John Donne. The last poem was swapped from his previous third poem at Regionals after a suggestion made by the judges.

“They thought that the poem that I used to have was not as complex and was simple compared to what I could do. One of the things they judge us on (is) how hard the poem is,” said Fields.

At State, Fields was one of ten contestants, each from one of the state’s ten POL regions. Many of the contestants, including last year’s winner, had competed at last

year’s State competition.

“It was really interesting seeing a lot of people there (from last year). Everyone had just improved so much,” said Fields.

Fields himself has improved a great deal, thanks to intensive coaching from theater teacher Joseph Schulte. Schulte and Fields have worked together almost every day the past couple months.

English teacher and POL coordinator for SLUH Chuck Hussung, who has described himself as a “bureaucratic liaison” for Fields, said that

while many people say that Fields’s talent is remarkable, he believes it is Fields’s hard work that sets him apart.

“Tom works tremendously hard. … What I stand in awe of, is how hard he works,” said Hussung.

Schulte and Fields’s work with approaching a poem from different angles shows during a performance, said Hussung.

“Each of our performances can only be one thing, but within that one thing,

continued on page 4

Boys and girls will not intermingle, says inside source BY stephen lumetta ELOQUENT WORDSMITHS

I

n a shocking decision, St. Louis University High School has decided that it will begin admitting girls beginning in the 2018-2019 school year.

“This was a decision we decided to make after a lot of deliberation,” said President David Laughlin. “But we decided that with the bicentennial coming up, this would be a good time to open our doors to girls and allow them to experience the wonders of a Jesuit education.”

Though Laughlin is excited, he understands that many alumni will be unhappy with the decision.

Conversation

“SLUH is a place steeped in tradition, and making a change as drastic as admitting females is not something that everyone will receive well, and I understand that,” Laughlin said. “However, we feel that (admitting girls) is something that will inevitably happen in SLUH’s future, and we decided that there is no better time to do it than the bicentennial year.”

However, even when girls are admitted to SLUH, boys and girls will not intermingle. Instead,

continued on page 6 photo | courtesy of Henry Goldkamp

“This is too beautiful,” Goldkamp on publishing WTH STL Prep News Features Editor Jacob Hilmes spoke with St. Louis poet Henry Goldkamp, ’07, about turning “What the Hell is St. Louis Thinking?” into a book. WTH STL involved circulating 40 typewriters throughout St. Louis (see volume 78, issue 3).

inside cover?

going about raising money for this? Can you bring me through the technical stuff, as well as anything you’ve done to try to raise money to publish this?

Henry Goldkamp: Yeah sure, just like the “best of ” sort of compilation—it’s a conversation within the city itself.

You know, it’s all written by St. Louis, it’s all submissions HG: Well, Kickstarter.

by St. Louisans, or people that That’s—there you go, I don’t were in St. Louis perhaps, but know what you need.

Jacob Hilmes: Before we it’s a “best of ” compilation. It’s start, can you give me an idea about 200 entries and submisJH: I guess, for people of what the book is about? sions to the project itself. who don’t know what KickWhat the summary would be starter is, could you sort of exon the back of the book or the JH: And how are you

The weekly student newspaper of St. Louis University High School 4970 Oakland Ave. - St. Louis, MO 63110 (314) 531-0330 ext. 2241 online at sluh.org/prepnews prepnews@sluh.org ©2014 St. Louis University High School Prep News. No material may be reprinted without the permission of the editors and moderator.

News

Mock Trial After two close losses, SLUH’s mock trial team will not advance forward from regionals, after two straight appearances in the state final. Page 5

art | Paul Fister

plain how that process works?

HG: Okay, well, it’s like a crowdsourcing website that takes ten percent of your funds if you get your money raised, so it’s an all or nothing thing. So we’re asking for $6400 in order to get 500 copies of the book published and out. That pays for the shipping and the actual publishing, graphic design, and

continued on page 4

News

Very Serious News Very serious news reported in real news style writing. ONLY HERE. Read about this in the SLU High Prep News a very real life newspaper. Pages 6,7 letters

SLUH reacts to tech Letter writers consider tech mandate in the context of SLUH’s tradition. Page 3

Goldkamp with two typewriters in front of the statue of St. Louis on Art Hill.

sports

Fun in the Florida Sun Varsity lacrosse dominated Jesuit competition from across the country on a spring break trip to Tampa. Page 9 sports

Ruggin it in Texas The Ruggerbills ventured down south to the Lone Star State to compete in the Dallas Jesuit tournament against some of the best teams in the nation. Page 9

index

P.2 Robotics competes at Chaifetz

Appalachia—see teaser P.3 Tech letter—Santel

Tech letter—Slama

A Max Garr Production P.4 Goldkamp—cont.

Poetry Out Loud—cont.

P.5 Global Ed. Cont.

Trial—see teaser

Model U.N. P.6 Sturm and Drang P.7 actually just blank P.8 Ukraine talk P.9 Sports Section Starts Rugby Lacrosse Track Baseball P.10 Tennis P.11 Volleyball Ultimate P.12 Minutes

2

Prep News

NEWS

March 28, 2014

Volume 78, Issue 21

Appalachian journey: 30 travel to build and befriend in Virginia

BY Paul J Fister STAFF ARTIST

T

hirty St. Louis U. High students and adult chaperones spent their spring break on the fourth annual week-long service trip to Appalachia. The trip brought four vans of eager serviceenthusiasts across the country to do work in the towns of Grundy and Barren Springs, Va., where they built new floors, helped in primary school classrooms, rescued stray dogs, and got to know the communities of two towns in one of the poorest regions in the country.

The group was smaller this year, with 12 students going to Grundy and ten to Barren Springs, compared to last year’s 16 in both places. The decrease made each group easier to manage and no less enthusiastic, said campus minister Simonie Anzalone, who did the majority of the organization for the trip but was unable to go herself.

“The nice thing was that we only needed to take four vans, two to each site, and thus only eight chaperones,” said Anzalone. “It was a little worrisome that less students were interested, so we perhaps need to promote and advertise the trip next year. …

Either way I heard wonderful things about both sites, and we did have a fantastic group of guys that did go.”

The group that went to Grundy, led by campus minister Dan Finucane, math teacher Dan Schuler, security guard John Walsh, and Cindy Jackson, mother of freshman Noah Jackson, worked at three different sites in Buchanan County with the organization Buchanan Neighbors United.

Senior Gabe Miller enjoyed his second spring break service trip.

“My work was pretty similar to last year,” said Miller. “I helped a bunch of SLUH people repair an old floor. It was made out of weak par-

ticle, and we replaced it with some good strong plywood, and then laid carpet on top. ... The lady whose house we worked on, Rachel—who I never saw because she was in a nursing home recovering from surgery—but she’s in an electric scooter and needed the floor.”

Besides Miller’s group, there were two other sites that the Grundy Jr. Bills worked on, both involving floors.

Senior Anthony Vienhage went to Grundy, also his second experience, this time with his brother, junior Rocco Vienhage, and his friend, senior Patrick Oster.

“Yeah, I’m a recruiter,” said Vienhage. “I came back because I think service is a good thing to do. I was glad to go last year; it was definitely worthwhile. And it’s way better than stupid old Florida, or Punta Cana.”

The group at Grundy stayed in a large parish center belonging to Harman Memorial Baptist Church and were welcomed and greeted by people they had worked with before. Every evening at both site, the groups of students met to discuss and reflect on the day.

“People in our own circles in St. Louis seem to engage more in technology and phones, and less with the people around them,” said Miller.

“People in Appalachia don’t have the mobile dependency that we do. There was a lot of small talk, friendly gestures, waving to passing cars, hugs, everyone called each other ‘honey’; it was all based on personal interaction and there was more present energy to those around you, resulting in a more warm atmosphere. …

I think we really need to think about how technology affects SLUH.” “Sometimes at SLUH we’re just there to become rich and successful,” said Vienhage, “but being rich and making money doesn’t really live up to the hype. ... Since it

photo | Meg Beugg

From left to right: senior Jake Bava, Gerard Bava, junior Thomas Lally (facing away), English teacher Scott Hessel, and junior Tom Gravlin at a dinner table in Barren Springs.

was my second year, I was able to jump in early, and being a part of the community shows you that it’s all about living your life, enjoying yourself, and loving the people around you.”

In Barren Springs the slightly smaller group of ten students, led by campus minister Meg Beugg, ASC teachers Scott Hessel and Shane Monagahan, and Gerard Bava, father of senior Jake Bava, stayed on a farm owned by a member of Neighbor to Neighbor, the organization through which they served.

It was Beugg’s third spring break trip to Barren Springs and fourth overall since her arrival at SLUH in the fall of 2011.

The group at Barren Springs worked in three different areas, painting the basement of a Pentecostal church—where they were later invited to come to a ser-

vice—building raised gardens for the church, and helping out in classrooms at a local grade school. Senior Jacob Hilmes, thrilled to be on his first spring break trip to Appalachia, had been looking forward to a big service trip for a while.

“I had been doing service, like at Karen House, and Sts. Peter and Paul with (art teacher John) Mueller, and I always kind of wanted to do a big thing, because I’ve never done a week-long mission thing,” said Hilmes.

“Even now, a week after I got back, I’m still thinking about all the great experiences I had,” said Hilmes.

“There was all this general stuff like we were helping people, which is really great, and you’re meeting people, but there’s also all these nuggets of memory in there that are just amazing, like Mr. Monaghan ripping his pants

while working, and we were all making fun of him, and Mr. Hessel had to get down and duct tape the hole back up, and the principal of the school we were working with took pictures of that.”

Hilmes said he found the trip very valuable, especially working with little kids.

“I had never worked with little kids in a school,” said Hilmes. “They treated the volunteers as heroes. ... On the last day, they all had a mob hug that knocked me over, twice, and it was great.

“The big thing the community really emphasized was integrating us into the community. One night we’d go to a pentecostal mass, another night we’d just hang around Sam’s (the host’s) house watching tv with his kids, and they made us dinner and we made ourselves breakfast. You felt like you were a part of the community.”

An interesting highlight to the trip was the arrival of a stray dog on the farm, named Sebastian—by senior Christian Siegfried—who lingered on the farm with the SLUH volunteers.

“We thought he was gonna wander away, but he just stayed,” said Beugg. “One day he was gone, but then he came back the next day.”

The SLUH group, anxious to find a home for the dog, asked the reluctant farm owners, who initially felt as though they had more dogs than they could handle. But eventually they decided to keep the dog, renaming him Charles SLUH Sebastian.

Beugg and the Bavas volunteered to help Charles’ new family care for him financially.

Anzalone and Beugg are currently working on a plan for this summer’s trip to Barren Springs.

Robotics places 24th in FIRST competition at Chaifetz Arena

BY Scotty REPORTER

I

Villhard

n its first year back, the revitalized St. Louis U. High Robotics team captured 24th place out of 45 teams in the St. Louis Regionals.

The Robobills participated in the FIRST Robotics Challenge, a competition where teams build robots to compete in certain tasks. The team was created this year by juniors Alessio Beffa and Eric Berg.

Because of the limited space, the Robobills only brought 11 team members to the competition, held at the Chaifetz Arena. Unfortunately, one of the captains, Beffa, was unable to make it because he was in China.

Several of the members in the pit worked as scouts— which is talking to other

teams about their and the Robobills’ robots. In fact, it was because of all this scouting that the team was picked by the eighth-ranked team to compete alongside them in the Final Eight of the tournament.

The Robobills played 11 games, eight on Friday and three on Saturday, and had a 5-6 win-loss record. A lot of other teams also had this record, and the rankings went down to the tiebreaker points, for things like assists and particular moves. To their advantage, the Robobills had more points than any other robot during the autonomous portion of the competition, the first ten seconds of each game when the robots all perform functions autonomously.

The team’s moderator, math teacher Tracy Lyons, and the supervisor, Greg Es-

chelbach, helped the group during the competition.

‘I would go and watch the matches before us,” said Lyons. “I would watch our games from the stands and maybe have a little bit of feedback from that, but mostly I would just watch for fun.”

But watching the matches wasn’t the only thing she did.

“I also took it as my job to make sure we got fed every day. When we got there at eight I asked everyone what they wanted for lunch, because I was really concerned about it,” Lyons said.

Beffa and Berg were proud of the strength of their robot.

“Our robot stayed together pretty well. There was another team who had a whole arm ripped right off of their robot,” said Berg.

photo | courtesy of Eric Berg

The RoboBills’ robot, which earned them 24th place in their first year of competing.

Their robot also had a pretty strong arm. Most other teams lobbed their shots, but the Robobills fired theirs.

Sometimes, it shot over the Aside from the team, goal. They made a lot of shots several teachers also came to through the highest, and the competition, including highest-scoring, goal. principal John Moran.

OPINION

March 28, 2014

Prep News Volume 78, Issue 21

Letters Ignatius’ digital globe will require reflection, awareness, discipline To the editors: The statue of St. Ignatius that stands outside of SLUH’s entrance shows him pointing at a globe. Ignatius’s pose illustrates a tenet of Jesuit spirituality: that God is to be found in all things; that if you seek God, you simply need to pay attention to what’s around you.

I keep thinking about that statue in relation to the administration’s recent announcement that starting in the 2015-2016 school year, it will require each student to carry some sort of computing device. On the one hand, the decision strikes me as characteristically Ignatian. The globe at which Ignatius points is now a digital one, often experienced through the Internet, iPads, iPhones, Google, Facebook, and all the other trappings of the digital age. By the logic of Ignatian spirituality, God can be found in these high-tech spaces as well as

anywhere else if they are approached with the right frame of mind.

And for centuries, Jesuit missionaries and educators have sought to understand how their pupils understand the world in order to communicate to them in terms they understand. In many ways, the decision to go to one-to-one devices is an extension of that ethos. Teaching at SLUH last year as part of the Alum Service Corps, I saw how deeply today’s students are immersed in technology—more deeply than even my classmates and I had been immersed in it just five years earlier—and I often felt at a loss as to how to meet my students in the digital realm. Introducing some kind of computing device will require creativity and patience from faculty and students alike—but if they invest that creativity and patience, they may find that new opportunities for learning will arise.

But the statue of St. Igna-

tius presents another lesson.

I said above that digital technology can be a means to finding God—if approached with the right frame of mind.

Here’s the problem: the frame of mind required to properly use technology—an attitude of reflection, awareness, and discipline—also happens to be the frame of mind most vulnerable to digital technology.

I’ve experienced this paradox, and I imagine that anyone reading this has, too.

Talking to a friend, I’ve felt my hand drift unconsciously towards my pocket, eager to see if a new text or email has appeared on my phone. Working on an essay or short story, I’ve felt myself start itching to log onto Facebook to see if anyone’s liked the new photo I’ve posted. Reading about the crisis in Ukraine, I’ve found myself 15 minutes later in the middle of Wikipedia’s entry on the 1974 Montreal Canadiens, with no idea how I

arrived there. If technology provides an unprecedented means for learning about the world that St. Ignatius instructs us to attend to, it also presents an unprecedented obstacle to experiencing that world in all of its fullness.

Technology shortens our attention spans, trains us to demand constant stimulation, and makes us impatient with tasks that require sustained thought and attention. It incessantly invites us to distraction, and so poses a real threat to education. If you don’t believe me, quietly let yourself into the back of a lecture hall at Wash U. or SLU. I promise that you’ll look out on a sea of distraction, a hundred screens following a hundred impulses, engaged in everything but learning.

So there is a challenge here. But there is also an opportunity. Since the devices won’t be introduced for a year, this means that SLUH has a year to discern how those de-

vices will fit into the school’s mission, to develop ways of ensuring that the devices serve as aids to, and not distractions from, education. This is a rare opportunity; from what I know of other schools’ technology programs, one-to-one devices are often adopted with little reflection or philosophical preparation. But SLUH has an opportunity to do so; moreover, as a Jesuit institution, I believe it has an obligation to do so.

SLUH should spend the next year imagining new emphases in the curriculum: on interpersonal skills; on cultural literacy; on prayer; on the importance of logging off, paying attention, being bored, and working through frustration and discomfort. Just as you and I have to work a little harder to focus our attention as we grow increasingly reliant on our iPhones and iPads, so SLUH should work a little harder to ensure that its core values—religion and the lib-

3

eral arts, as its seal reads—are not lost as screens become more central to its classrooms.

Whatever form the preparation for the forthcoming devices takes, I would urge two things: that the discussion should be school-wide and led by teachers and students rather than the administration; and that it be a sincere effort to do right by SLUH’s mission.

Think again of that image of St. Ignatius pointing at the globe. In our time, it’s often easy to forget that screens are just one part of the world.

But they are not the world itself. As SLUH prepares to assign a screen to every student, it should also start thinking about how to get students to look up from those screens, to remember that beyond those screens’ edges, the world awaits.

Jim Santel, ’08 Alum Service Corps 2012-13

Many questions about proposed one-to-one technology To the editors: St. Louis University High School is nearing its 200th birthday. In almost 200 years, we’ve experienced rapid change: we’ve grown from a house on Third and Market Streets downtown to a full school building on Second, been granted a new campus from the generosity of Anna Backer in honor of her alumnus husband, built a theater and athletic fields, and, in recent years, added internet, Google Apps, and cell phones to student life. Despite age, SLUH has continuously adapted to a changing world because what we offer here is good, and should be maintained through the test of time.

None of this alone, however, is reason to require so soon one-to-one student devices merely because that’s what a “twenty-first century school” does.

As I have said, what we offer at SLUH is valuable. The question should not be: “What does a twenty-first century school do?” As a Christian, Catholic, Jesuit institution, we should not evaluate decisions by the status quo; we are instead meant to see past it to envision the proper path, regardless of whether or not it is popular, a challenge issued to us by our Jesuit brother, Pope Francis. Going with the mainstream for the sake of going with the mainstream develops a dangerous herd mentality, and this decision-making process should not be made nor modeled to students at a school that prides itself on its ability to teach the power of individual thought.

Instead, the question we should be asking is: “What does one-on-one student technology have to add to the intellectual environment al-

ready offered by our school?”

My answer, from the experience of one of the school’s students, one of those whom this wealth of intellectualism is primarily intended to serve, is: very little to make it worth the price, financial and otherwise.

Financially, we all know that 1,100 devices is a daunting demand. Our school, thanks to the generosity of our alumni who have benefited here, gives over a third of its students financial aid. The addition of required student technology would place great strain on these families and possibly add to their numbers due to the price of these devices. Twenty to 30 personal laptops or tablets in every room would require major renovations to the Backer Memorial in order to then charge these devices (whether or not a single model should be required by the school), a monumental financial and technical task for our building and IT crews which would add more costs.

Beyond the money and numbers, however, lie deeper concerns felt by many of us students. As the digital generation, all of us know too well the temptations offered by technology. While it is ultimately up to every student to resist his own temptations, this is made no easier when we are all given a device to be carried and used at all times, more accessible in class than our own cell phones. Other schools have already experienced this problem: I, for one, have been told stories of Bubble Shooter action in history classes at Rosati-Kain and Skype calls made from Chaminade classrooms. In fact, several of my own friends at SLUH have told me of playing Peggle for three hours a day in their summer classes. While there are quite a few applica-

tions of educational value, many more offer games and irrelevant puzzles to be played the moment a teacher’s back is turned. Even with distractions aside, the risk of overusing technology in the classroom poses a risk to the humanto-human relationships that form the foundation of our school.

The greatest cost, however, is hardly a cost to SLUH, but more so to those a world away.

It is now common knowledge that big-name companies who produce such devices as those we may select run the sweatshops which our school last year, with our administration applauding, condemned when Jim Keady spoke to us. The grave cost here is to the sweatshop worker poisoned by dangerous chemicals as he or she assembles a tablet or laptop to be sent to a school that claims to fight the very factory that made the device. The cost to

SLUH here is our moral integrity: we cannot claim to follow in the footsteps of Christ as we cheer for an end to sweatshops while at the same time championing ourselves for being “modern” with devices made in those shops. Christ sneered at hypocrites.

St. Louis U. High is a school of great ungraduated tradition: Catholic tradition, academic tradition, Jesuit tradition. Not all technology threatens these traditions; in many ways, it enhances them.

However, we must look closely at our motives before taking giant leaps. Is what we are doing necessary? Does it prepare the students for college? If we fear that our school may be seen as backwards if we do not make this switch: do we truly wish to base the appearance of our school so much in our technology, or is there something deeper that we must focus on? Does this technol-

ogy add to or detract from the great wealth of intellect that has kept our doors wide open for nearly 200 years?

Perhaps it may be better to, for the time being, purchase carts with the devices we seek after we have evaluated the fairness of their production. My personal proposal would be a threeto-one room-to-cart ratio, or something along those lines.

This way, resources would be available to all who may need them without intertwining their screens too deeply into our own lives. This, too, would have many ramifications, but less in number and in magnitude than the current path laid out by the administration; fewer devices means fewer needs for money and outlets.

Also, should devices prove not as useful as they were previously thought, this course of action would be much more reversible than jumping to a

one-to-one ratio.

Many at SLUH are concerned about this decision, and they are not alone. Those concerned worry about the motives behind the decisions and the consequences.

I urge my fellow students and our teachers to make their voices heard on this, to not fear voicing what may seem to be an unpopular opinion, and to call this school to look at itself before it should act.

We must think for ourselves and not accept a decision because it seems unanimous or is termed “modern.” As Pope Francis has taught us, we need not fear “a mess” in the search for what is good.

AMDG, Joe Slama, ’15 (Information on the school’s history is found at sluh.org/about/history.)

The cartoon does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Prep News or St. Louis U. High.

4

NEWS

Prep News Volume 78, Issue 21

Students for Life hold vigil

photo | Leo Heinz

Members of Students for Life pray the rosary outside of Planned Parenthood.

BY Luke STAFF

Miller

S

tudents for Life took part in the 40 Days for Life event on Mar. 14 by taking part in a two-hour vigil outside the Planned Parenthood clinic in the Central West End. Club moderator David Callon and seven SLUH students went to say prayers and show support for the cause.

40 Days for Life is an international campaign that occurs during Lent “with the purpose of repentance, to seek God’s favor to turn hearts and minds from a culture of death to a culture of life, thus bringing an end to abortion,” as put in the organization’s mission statement on their website.

They attempt to achieve this goal through prayer and fasting, community outreach, and peaceful vigil, which is the event in which the Students for Life took witness.

The peaceful vigil is designed to be a round-the-clock event, taking place during the hours of operation of Planned Parenthood in two-hour shifts.

40 Days of Life joined with the women’s aid organization Thrive, who provided a mobile pregnancy resource center. The resource center provided prospective mothers with free pregnancy tests, AIDS tests, and ultrasounds.

“It was kind of awkward when we started (our shift) because we were just

eight people on the corner of the street, but then (junior) Thomas Hogan started leading us in the rosary.” said Callon.

The goal of the vigil, it should be noted, is not to protest the actions of the Planned Parenthood clinic, but to spread awareness of abortion alternatives and to pray for the women with unwanted pregnancies.

“40 Days (for Life) is not a protest as much as an act of witness to the dignity and value of every human life,” said Callon. “We didn’t have many signs to display and what we were there for wasn’t for picketing but to grab attention.

We didn’t want to make any-

one unnecessarily uncomfortable.”

Students for Life was approached for the campaign by a 40 Days for Life organizer and sidewalk counselor Christy McCollom, who is also the mother of SLUH junior Austin McCollom. SLUH has been asked to participate in the event before but had only recently taken a shift.

“I thought it was a really neat, prayerful experience,” said sophomore Liam Cler. “It wasn’t really solemn or sad.

It was actually fairly joyful, along with most of the other people who were there along with us.”

“I realize that standing in front of a Planned Parenthood location, publically vocalizing your pro-life views is uncomfortable and isn’t everyone’s favorite way to support a cause, but it is an important part in gaining support and spreading awareness on the pro-life issues and the alternative options to abortions,” said Callon.

Students for Life hopes to get further participation in future efforts. It hopes to have many of its activities include students outside its organization involved.

“We hope to get more of the school showing their views and standing for this cause. Many students believe themselves pro-life, and we hope to see them,” said Callon.

–additional reporting contributed by Leo K. Heinz

Conversation

“Fund it and you’ll figure out why it’s St. Louis” (continued from page 1) the funding for Amazon, and Kickstarter takes a pretty big chunk out of it.

So that’s what you need to make it happen. It ends on April 20, and if we don’t raise $6400 then any money that’s raised is for naught, like it’s nothing, like you don’t get anything. So it really has to happen in order to pull the trigger on this thing, and I really hope it does, because it’s been looming over me like this horrible, retched brain cloud of rain.

And I really want to be able to share this with St. Louis. I’m extremely passionate about it, and people need to see this, because it’s amazing, like the submissions are incredible, and St. Louis has something to say, and this, along with many other things that are going on in St. Louis, is going to put St. Louis back on the map. I feel like there’s sort of a renaissance happening in the city, and I would love to contribute to that, so that’s what I’m going to do.

JH: Earlier you said it’s a conversation about St. Louis; it’s a conversation with St. Louis. What makes this stand out as St. Louis? How is this going to be a book about St. Louis and not about some other city in the United States or anywhere?

HG: Well, obviously, the

obvious, it’s a very obvious answer: It came from St. Louis.

Anybody that was typing was surrounded by St. Louis, so it had to have an effect on them whether they’re a tourist or not. It doesn’t matter, and the way that it’s written and the way that it is worded on some of these submissions is ... I was asked this question earlier today. In the interview, it was like “How much effort

these are very obvious sorts of stereotypes of St. Louis and different things that happen there.

But the other thing, too, like there’s also submissions that are very poignant, like tenants in the streets of India, and the bars in Paris, and telling people about why they’re the same exact city, and why St. Louis is better than those cities, and they give legitimate

How is this going to be a book about St. Louis and not about some other city in the United States or anywhere?

like I couldn’t edit in public places. I would start crying in public for no reason. I’m just here reading these goddamn entries, and I feel like ‘Holy shit, this is too beautiful. I can’t handle it. I can’t do it anymore.’ Start crying in the middle of a Starbucks. It’s, like, amazing. So sometimes you have to step out of this city in order to define it from an outside perspective, and that’s what I’m in the midst of in this little sabbatical right now, so yeah, it’s—it’s St. Louis. That’s all I can say. I’m a trustworthy guy; it’s St. Louis.

JH: Now, so you’ve got all this passion behind this, can Well, obviously, the obvious, it’s a very you give me your best case scenario for the book, what obvious answer: It came from St. Louis. you’re sort of dreaming is the thing you can achieve with -Henry Goldkamp ’07 this.

were you putting into editing to make sure it was very obviously St. Louis?”

And my answer to that was it kind of works itself out, because there were just little tangents about St. Louis.

There were certain things that were very transparent, like they would mention provel, or it would mention—like one of the submissions was something along the lines of ‘If the weatherman predicts that it’s seven degrees, and it’s a hundred and three one more time, he’s personally coming over to my house and apologizing.’ So

reasons, convincing reasons, as to why St. Louis is just as good albeit not as famous. It doesn’t matter. So it’s—just— (audible sigh) Fund it and you’ll figure out why it’s St. Louis. That answer is all I can say, because it is—it is perfect; it’s amazing; it’s amazing what I have. I want to share it with people. That’s all there is to it.

I’m in New Orleans right now, talking from New Orleans, because I couldn’t stand to stay in St. Louis while I’m finishing this project. I plan on moving up, again, in three months, but I can’t take it,

HG: The only thing I want is just this to get published. I just want to be able to share this with people. It’ll do all the work on its own.

The hassle is the initial project itself. I need nothing in terms of PR. A Times Arts article covered it, NPR gives me an eight-minute interview with like a million people listening. I did nothing to do that.

It was the idea itself that sold the idea, and that’s all that this book is going to do to.

All I want is to finish this.

I just want this to be done, and move on, because I’ve got more beauty to share, I’ve got

March 28, 2014

Mo. poetry title goes to Fields on 2nd attempt Fields first to move to nationals since Winfrey, ‘09 (continued from page 1) there’s a suppleness to the performance that makes it feel very alive in this moment,” said Hussung.

To prepare for Nationals, Fields will have to switch some things around. He has decided to make “The Way It Sometimes Is” his third poem.

“It’s always come out a bit flat to me, and I think I need to mix it up a bit,” said Fields.

Putting the strongest poems first is a strategy that can be advantageous at Nationals.

The country is divided into three regions, and all the contestants within a region per-

form their first two poems.

Within that region, judges select some contestants to recite their third poem. Out of those contestants, the judges select a small number of people to represent the region in the finals at Nationals. Pete Winfrey, ’09, won the 2009 State Competition and advanced to the finals at Nationals, putting him in the top 12 in the country.

Fields, as a result of winning State, has won $500 for the school to spend on poetry books and anthologies.

Nationals runs from April 28 to 30.

The following poem, “The Canonization” by John Donne was one of the poems Fields performed at the state poetry competition. Fields also performed “The Way It Sometimes Is” by Henry Taylor and “Sestina: Like” by A.E. Stallings.

For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love, Or chide my palsy, or my gout, My five gray hairs, or ruined fortune flout, With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve, Take you a course, get you a place, Observe his honor, or his grace, Or the king’s real, or his stampèd face Contemplate; what you will, approve, So you will let me love.

Alas, alas, who’s injured by my love?

What merchant’s ships have my sighs drowned?

Who says my tears have overflowed his ground?

When did my colds a forward spring remove?

When did the heats which my veins fill Add one more to the plaguy bill?

Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still Litigious men, which quarrels move, Though she and I do love.

Call us what you will, we are made such by love; Call her one, me another fly, We’re tapers too, and at our own cost die, And we in us find the eagle and the dove.

The phœnix riddle hath more wit By us; we two being one, are it.

So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.

We die and rise the same, and prove Mysterious by this love.

We can die by it, if not live by love, And if unfit for tombs and hearse Our legend be, it will be fit for verse; And if no piece of chronicle we prove, We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms; As well a well-wrought urn becomes The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs, And by these hymns, all shall approve Us canonized for Love.

And thus invoke us: “You, whom reverend love Made one another’s hermitage; You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage; Who did the whole world’s soul contract, and drove Into the glasses of your eyes (So made such mirrors, and such spies, That they did all to you epitomize) Countries, towns, courts: beg from above A pattern of your love!” more things to do, like I need to finish this and move on.

Like, I’ve got—I’ve got things to do, Jacob, like I’ve got, I’ve got more ideas, I’ve got better ideas, and I need to move on and finish this and close a chapter on this, and keep on moving on, you know what I mean?

JH: Yes, and I look forward to seeing those other ideas, Henry. That’s all I have

for you. This was wonderful.

HG: All right, cool man, I really appreciate it, and keep on doing what you do man. I don’t know if you’re trying to pursue a journalism degree or whatever, but I hope you do. Do something good. Do something artistic, man.

Fund Goldkamp’s book at kck.st/1iFXub8

NEWS

March 28, 2014

Prep News Volume 78, Issue 21

God Save the Queen: Model U.N. represents UK at Central Illinois

photo | Mr. Tom Wilson

Global Education makes waves (continued from page 1) “We’ve talked about, in addition to language instruction, subjects that complement language instruction, whether economics, history, or literature—something within a sphere consistent and complementary to foreign languages,” said McDonough.

The group has also discussed spending time abroad, volunteerism, service, and immersion trips such as Honduras, Mission Appalachia, and Camden, New Jersey.

(We’ve looked at) admissions diversity and faculty diversity. (We want to) have a student body that’s a bit more reflective of what the state of

Clockwise from back left: senior Robert Braddock, senior Jim Onder, senior Jim Gasch, junior Nick Perryman, and senior Ryan Cailteux.

BY Sam STAFF

Chechik

F

ive St. Louis U. High students got to throw their diplomatic weight around at the Central Illinois Model U.N. Conference at Blackburn College in Carlinville, Ill., on Thursday, March 6. Model U.N. conferences are simulations of the United Nations meetings in New York City.

The conference was organized by the students and professors at Blackburn College.

The students from SLUH were seniors Robert Braddock, Ryan Cailteux, James Gasch, James Onder, and junior Nick Perryman. All of the SLUH students represented the United Kingdom.

The SLUH group spent its day observing the other participants since it was their

photo | Mr. Matt Sciuto

first time at this particular conference.

Braddock and Onder represented the U.K. for Security Council, Cailteux and Perryman represented the U.K. for the General Assembly, and Gasch represented the U.K. for the Economic and Social category.

“We had to follow protocols in a thick packet of all the rules on how you had to work.

This sytem made it confusing because even when we had something to say, we didn’t know how to say it (for some of the time),” said Braddock.

The Security Council handled two crises: one from Syria and one from Ukraine.

“Since the U.K. was one of the veto powers in the U.N. Security Council, we played a really important role and did

really well,” said Braddock.

This was SLUH’s first year attending, and they plan to return next year. The SLUH students and moderator Tom Wilson have already chosen their countries, Chile and Turkey, to represent in the conference.

“There was some competition, yes, and the students from Blackburn looked at the different groups of students there, and they judged accordingly on how they represented their country, how they presented their resolutions, and how they debated back and forth,” said Wilson.

“Even though we did not win anything, we held our own.

For our first time, the guys did Seniors Adam Thorp, Rob Hayes, Sam Beckmann, and junior Preston Bruce in court. a very nice job and got some nice compliments, which was Anne Marie Lodholz After two straight appearances in erator great for the first year.” equated the competition with game, explaining state finals, team will not advance athatbaseball it came down to waiting “Title of the Screenplay I’m for a team to make a mistake. beyond regional contests During the trials, each side Working On” was nearly flawless, but in the

BY Jack Sinay Hayes said, “The team per- end, Clayton and MICDS had REPORTER Staff Photographer formed wonderfully. Our law- a small edge in the expert witMiller Ben “Nature” Banet t. Louis U. High’s Mock yers handled objections with ness’ testimony.

Thomas “Tension” WilTrial season came to an poise and confidence, and our Hayes said, “We just drew liams Contributing Photogend last Thursday when losses witnesses put on spectacular two very tough teams, who Marty “How I got whupped raphers to Clayton and MICDS elimi- theatrical performances.” both beat us by narrow marby Jack Godar in 1v1” nated the team from the disHayes explained the trials gins.”

Mr. Diego “Agree/DisJohnson trict competition. were very close, neither one a Lodholz agreed, saying, agree” Navarro Nolen “Reagan: I Forgot to Mr. Dan “The Ice Losing two ballots to one runaway.

“Because of who we drew, Duck” Doorack in each of the trials, the team “Both Clayton and someone had to be eliminatCream Melted” CanSam “It’s Hard Out There failed to get the much-needed MICDS had strong cross ex- ed, and it just happened to be non win for an advancement to aminations, but our witnesses us.” for a Chechik” Chechik Mr. Matt “Stasis” state. were able to adapt incredibly SLUH was also well-preSciuto Though the loss was disquickly. ” pared, carving out a solid case Reporters Mr. Tom appointing, senior Robert History teacher and mod- theory a full month ahead of Connor “The Dart Show: “Vassals:Peasant Life photo | Mr. Matt Sciuto trial.

Scottie G’s Golf Endeavors” in Medieval Europe” Lodholz explained, FitzGerald Wilson “That doesn’t usually happen Charlie “Life’s a Racquet” Ms. Meg “Draft Day” until after Regionals, when Mueth Beugg you really hammer down a Rick “Breaking Elevators” Sam “Family Circus” good theory for the case.”

Garner Beckmann The team moves into Jack “Maturity: The Movie” Patrick “Dawn Invathe offseason with hope for Sinay sion” Enderle next year. Through recruitScotty “Live Free, Die VillMr. James “The Great ing, plans to attend a mock hard” Villhard trial summer program, and Preator” Eberle Michael “Zombie Panda lessons learned from this year, Hotel Concierges” Sit SLUH hopes to regain its State Contributing Artist Michael “How to Be a Glut- Maxwell “Awesome championship from the 2011 ton” Daugherty season.

Screenplay” Garr Matt “The Gentleman” Lodholz said, “We’ll have to look to our coaches, both Godar Advisor past and present, who we have Mr. Scott “Running to thank for really guiding us Staff Artist Your Show: The Tim through the years.”

Paul “Chef Goldblum 2: Curdt Story” Hessel For any more informaThe Silver Ladle” Fister tion regarding SLUH Mock Tom “The Confession: 2-D Moderator Trial during the off-season, Lincoln Guillotine” Fields Mr. Steve “English Senior Rob Hayes gives his closing statement. follow @SluhLaw on Twitter.

Volume 78, Issue 21

News Editor Stephen “Harford Convention: The Death of the Federalist Party” Lumetta Features Editor Jacob “Macroeconomics: Foyz II Men” Hilmes Sports and Web Editor Will “Stolen Identity: the Fresh Prince of Bel Air” Smith Sports Editor Danny “Turning the Charm On” Schneller Core Staff Jack “Ol’ Ironhair” Godar Keith “The Big Delight” Thomas Thomas “Doc Dynasty” Riganti Leo “Bill O’Reilly: An American Hero” Heinz Sam “Joe Godar: Back 3 the Streets” Fentress Jack “Ma femme: Morte” Kiehl Staff Luke “As I Lay Dying 2”

as well as develop metrics and call-to-action steps for implementation.”

The metrics the group will develop will be used to measure the success of global education implementation.

The group’s new goals will focus on creating a globally-minded SLUH student, T a student with geographic, political, linguistic, economic, and cultural competence, according to McDonough. “(The goal is) local and international opportunities to experience (cultures) and develop an empathy for those cultures,” said Zinselmeyer.

Mock Trial faces Regional disappointment

Prep News

Editor-in-Chief Adam “A Steady Approach” Thorp

Missouri looks like,” said McDonough.

The group has looked at how global education fits into SLUH and how other schools and institutions have dealt with global education.

Zinselmeyer, McDonough, and history teacher Tim O’Neil visited Boston College High School last November and met with Dr. Fernando Riemers of Harvard University.

After passing the halfway mark of the visioning process, the group will move onto the next stage of planning.

“We’ve established a really good set of goals,” said Zinselmeyer. “When we return in April, we’ll refine those goals

5

Credits

S

Grader: Fifty Shades of C” Missey

6

NUGGETS

Prep News

March 28, 2014

Volume 78, Issue 21

Somehow we’re letting English department-born “Coherent Faulkner” releases seminal Set Fire To These Essays girls in, apparently (continued from page 1)

administrators are planning to use a format similar to Regis High School in Denver, where the boys and girls are split into two different schools. This way, Laughlin said, students of both genders will be able to enjoy the benefits of a Jesuit education and also single sex education.

“We talked with a lot of people from Regis and they all were ebullient in their praise of this system. It’s worked really well for them and I can’t see why it won’t work great for us as well,” said principal John Moran.

John Rick is also very excited about the change.

“One of our goals for the future is for people to know about SLUH on the East and West Coast, and Regis certainly became known on a national level a few years ago partly thanks to them admitting girls,” Rick said. “Now, we just also need to find a girl who also happens to be an Olympic-level swimmer like Missy Franklin, and hope CBC doesn’t recruit her.”

Teachers have mixed reactions regarding the decision.

“I hate it,” said theology teacher Matt Scuito. “One of the things that makes SLUH

special is that we’re an allboys school and this will ruin it. However, I’ll keep my mind open and maybe I’ll have a metanoia about it.”

“Woo! More girls!

Woo!” said Latin teacher Jennifer Ice. “Go crazy folks, go crazy!” shouts Mike Shannon.

In general students are not too happy about the decision.

“I don’t like this at all.

This undermines nearly 200 years of tradition as an allboys Jesuit school,” said one sophomore. “And to make matters worse, I won’t be here when there are girls! I mean, if you’re gonna buck tradition, do it in a manner conducive to my success with chicks.”

Though they don’t necessarily agree with the decision, the majority of students believe that SLUH will be able to handle girls with class and treat them like any other student.

“I really don’t think it will be a problem at all. I don’t think that girls are any different from any…,” said a freshman, before trailing off as his head whipped around after hearing a fellow freshman shout “GIRL!”

BY Irwin Owen P. Chuttlesworth

WEARS CASHMERE SWEATERS AROUND WAIST

One of the hottest acts of 2014, Coherent Faulkner, has just dropped their debut album, Set Fire to These Essays. Not only does the band combine literate, intellectual, lyrics with monster hooks and catchy beats, there’s a small SLUH connection, as the band is composed entirely of members of the SLUH English department.

The band is comprised of “Slammin’” Steve” Missey on lead guitar, Chuck Hussung on rhythm guitar, Tim Curdt on bass, Frank Kovarik on drums, Scott Hessel on keyboards and David Callon on the electric harp. Set Fire contains 10 songs and each band member penned two of the songs(Missey and Curdt collaborated on a duet).

Ironically, this gives Coherent Faulkner a not so coherent musical sound, ranging from heavy metal to smooth and sensual R&B. Set Fire to These Essays starts with the lead single, which is Slammin Steve’s hard-rocking title track. Fea-

turing a violently delicious guitar hook from Missey and a heavily distorted harp, Missey pours out his anger at subpar essays, screaming “Mayday! Mayday!/ I’m gonna take a match/ And set fire to the essays!”, emotion pouring through the speakers like wine at Menelaus’ palace.

“It’s one of my favorite songs on the album,” said Hussung. “Steve’s frustration is just so palpable, so real, I feel like I’m living it when I sing along in the car. It reminds me of my uncle’s anger when his brother-in-law stole his slice of chocolate cake.”

Hussung’s tracks are some of the more calming moments on the track, using little more than Hussung’s acoustic guitar and his soothing voice. However, Hussung’s voice can lull you into missing lyrical gold, especially on his standout track “Childhood in the Bluegrass State” “It’s profound. Real profound, like Z.Z. Packer’s short story, ‘Drinking Coffee Elsewhere,’” said Kovarik.

Some of the odder songs

of the album come from keyboardist Scott Hessel, who pens fierce electro-metal songs about being lovable and wearing sweater vests.

“On (Hessel’s) songs, the music is fierce, ferocious and frightenting, but Hessel just has this lovable presence on the mic that brings it all together,” said Callon.

Curdt’s song “R U Ready 4 Wrasslin’?” plays like a bad 80’s TV theme song, with generic guitars, fast drumming and cheesy lyrics such as “You ready to grapple?/ Cause now’s the time/Any day with wrasslin/Is more than fine!”

If you’re on a date, crank up the two Kovarik songs, silky smooth R&B numbers, which center around soulful vocals from Kovarik, and Callon’s lush harp work.

“Kovarik takes cool to a whole new level,” Hessel said.

“I knew he was cool, but on these songs, he’s as cool as Faulkner is brilliant.”

Callon, meanwhile, proves that you can play hooks on a harp, and also, play a harp with wild energy and reckless abandon on his tracks, which are heavily in-

fluenced by 80’s power ballads, but with a harp.

“It sounds way better than you’d think,” Missey said. “I didn’t know anyone could play a harp with the energy of a rock guitarist, but he does. I just hope he doesn’t smash his harp on stage again. Those things cost more than the NHS budget.”

The ultimate high point on the album, however, is Missey and Curdt’s heartfelt and sincere duet, “Never Gonna Stop Hating You”. Another song with power ballad influences, you feel like these two actually hate each other, to the point where they love each other—as the object of their hatred, of course. However, Hessel did say it’s the hardest song for him to play.

“I can’t get through it without cracking up,” Hessel said.

Coherent Faulkner will be opening for Insane Clown Posse, with Matt and Kim at Schnucks in Des Peres on Saturday night as part of their live music series. Donations are appreciated!

Relativ-what? Suffix feud trashes school, destroys department bonds

BY Craig Hannick and Jom Santel RE-POTTERS

This one’s for the history books. In a St. Louis U. High interdepartmental struggle that left several faculty members injured and a large rift in the school community, a suffix was the dealbreaker—take that, Sean O’Brien.

The strife, which was caused primarily by a misconception of the difference between the terms “relativity” (a scientific theory concerning the universal behavior of light, space, time, and gravity) and “relativism” (a moral structure in which there is no Truth), began late last Thursday evening. Theology teacher Ralph Houlihan was taking a catnap in the Currigan room when he

was disturbed by a conversation taking place in the nearby kitchen.

“Some Joe-Handsome was gushing over this moral relativism garbage,” said Houlihan, behind bars at the St. Louis County jail in Clayton. “So I got up and socked him.”

That Joe-Handsome was physics teacher Eric LaBoube, who escaped before Houlihan could do anything more. Turmoil subsided until Friday morning around 6:40 am, when theology teacher Rob Garavaglia arrived to find the theology office trashed.

“I walked in and I just about blew a gasket,” said NHS spiritual director Garavaglia, whose heart rate has never been known to

be above 30 beats per minute. “There were pictures of Einstein and all these flyers promoting moral relativism.

They had printed out Logger Pro graphs of ‘Intelligence versus Time Spent Pursuing a Theology Degree’ and left them on all of our desks.”

Garavaglia immediately went up to the Science office, where no one had yet arrived.

Smashing the plexiglass windows with the brunt end of his nordic walking poles, he succeeded in demolishing several of chemistry teacher Mary Russo’s prized Ming vases. Unbeknownst to him, Russo had stocked the office fridge full of plastic explosives she planned to use in a demonstration for the next day’s class. When Garavaglia went to trash the fridge, photo | Guiseppe Doorak Siddarth

Newly hired SLUH Security members Poe Jorter and Crom Zinzezmezez.

he accidentally set one off, permanently welding his walking poles to his arms.

Aided by his newly-attached walking poles and fueled by the burning sensation in his limbs, Garavaglia powerwalked to his house and collapsed into a peaceful, 2 week nap.

By that point, several theology and science department members had learned of the feud and gathered in the first floor of the J-Wing, near the original SLUH entrance.

“Part of me was hoping things would just get solved democratically,” said chemistry teacher Chuck Busenhart.

“But I tell you, the other part of me was hoping I was going to finally get to use that vat of liquid nitrogen I’ve been brewing in the basement for 30 years.”

Around 7:30, Principal John Moran arrived on the scene.

“He literally drove his 8-wheel truck through Fr. Marco’s classroom and into the hall,” said one freshman.

“Swag.”

Moran, after threatening to fire everyone then and there, proposed a game of bashball to decide whether relativity would be taught at SLUH. “All the nerds there were really bummed, but I was like, ‘Heck, yeah’,” said phys-

ics teacher Kent Kershenski.

Kershenski totaled 0 points in the game.

In short, the game was a disaster.

“I played college soccer, but I had never seen anything like it,” said Russo. “Tim (Rittenhouse) started off the game by walking around the fieldhouse with a microphone in his hand for half an hour, mumbling an incoherent mix of bashball’s rules, the new branding guidelines, and a punchline from a Bill Cosby routine. Then Paul (Baudendistel) asked him when intramurals were starting, at which point he said he had to go teach a class and that we could begin.”

Near the end of the game, as tempers still raged and the field house lay a barren wasteland, a radiant hero arose from the ashes: Scott “Laser Beam” Gilbert, Crusher of Nations. Gilbert, SLUH’s nurse and residential dodgeball emperor, took down every faculty member with a single mighty hurl.

“It was the least I could do,” said Gilbert, sitting atop a pile of classic cars and waving posters of valuable life lessons in the field house. “I do it all for the fans. And the kids. Oh, and follow me on Twitter at @11CoachG.” Physical engagement having cleared up any conflict there might have been,

and due to the phenomenal medical skills of Gilbert, most of the faculty are nursing only minor wounds at this point.

“I’m doing great,” said deacon Al Boedeker, “If you don’t count this infected bite I received from Mr. Pham.”

Moran said all curriculum issues have been cleared up, more or less.

“What I did was that I sat myself down with a piece of paper with three words on it: relativity, relativism, and Grad At Grad [sic],” said Moran. “I stared at that piece of paper for a very long time.

And then I crumpled it up.

The question I asked myself was, ‘There’s an easy answer to this. And John, you’re the one to do it.’ And I thought about all the financial aspects of it, the ‘this’s and that’s’ of the situation. The ‘do’s and don’t’s’, et cetera. And at some point, I came up with this: ‘What is the answer; could it really be that simple?’ And it wasn’t, but here’s the point: SLUH is an institution at a point in time where in our world we know that right now, there are answers—that we can know with our minds.

And that’s the power of the Home Depot.”

ONION

March 28, 2014

Archive: SLUH takes innovative leap towards 21st century BY 2027242 FEATURES EDITOR

A Letter to the Editors

I

n a step both inside and outside of St. Louis U. High’s “Men for others” mentality, several faculty members will offer a Twenty-First Century Studies course in the spring of the 2024-2025 school year.

The idea comes out of SLUH’s planning committee, specifically the “Thinking Imagination of Visioning the Years Between 2020 and 2030” project.

“It was actually pretty obvious,” said Admissions Director Adam Cruz. “We asked ourselves, ‘What is SLUH missing?’ And at first we thought ‘a prison,’ but eventually the board landed on history, and, you know, we thought that would be beneficial, and much more educational.”

“I love the idea,” said Director of Information Technology and Athletic Director Tim Rittenhouse. “When they announced it, I almost leaped out, ran up there, and took it before anyone else could.”

Rittenhouse, along with art teachers Bill Brown and Tom Flanagan, will handle teaching one of the first three classes in the second

Giggles? Not What I’m Hearing When I think about Cafeteria Food Names These Days

D

ear kids,

Art teacher Bill Brown.

semester. This will take Rittenhouse out of his office in the third of four Danis Field Houses and into classroom M103, located in Ralph Houlihan’s left eyebrow.

“Mr. Rit is a great guy. I can’t wait to see what kind of things he’s got cooking up,” said sophomore 2028307.

Before enrolling, students must attend an orientation this coming Friday, May 27.

“On Friday, we’ll open up with some basic stuff,” said Flanagan. “Things like the downfall of Miley Cyrus.

As for the course, we might dip into lesser known events, such as Barack Obama’s presidency, the brief reemergence of the Beastie Boys, several

continued on page 37

For the past fifteen years, the St. Louis U. High kitchen staff has served Chicken Giggles. As our Jesuit institution lurches towards change, the students have a right to speak, to have a voice in such pivotal times as these. This past Thursday, March 27, the activity period snack was listed as Giggles, simply Giggles. This is where we draw the line.

We’ve tolerated names such as shrimp bites and Bavarian pretzels, your Cheesey’s, both of the potato and noodle variety. Brunch for Lunch, despite its redundant nature, was acceptable even if mentally unprocessable. And when Mini Tacos was listed as the snack, lunch, health special, and vegetarian option, we nodded.

“Fine,” we said. “Have your whimsical names, as long as the Boscos flow blenty.”

But Giggles, Giggles evokes pain and a world of headaches, an indigestion of the mind. Keep the ‘Chicken’ and it works, capturing the essence of the snack, the stamped smile of the per-

haps once-grinning chunk of meat, the sense of consumable laughter. Giggles draws images of jumper-clad kindergartners reverse-swallowing happiness into cups of bite-sized, hand breaded nuggets, their pigtails and bowl cuts sticking to the cages of a processing plant.

At a faculty meeting, Dr. John Moran explained that the Giggles would be used as tools. “When people ask, ‘how will this improve lunch,’ I cringe and resist that question,” said Moran. “That’s like asking how a mandatory pep rally will improve school spirit.” Moran reveals that the administration has lost touch with its students.

They’ve never wandered into a cafeteria line of wet trays and hot lights, avoiding Adam Cruz and finding the perfect height of a fry boat that wavers between reasonable and avalanche.

No, SLUH should turn to its students, its chicken wrap connoisseurs, to decide if this holy establishment can take the leap towards Giggles.

-Dan Harmon, 1996

CLASSIFIED AUCTION BLOCK I am selling my horse, Allenia. She is 34 years old and still going strong. Give me a buzz at 1-800-GRANNY8 to talk moolah.

—Deacon Boedeker

Prep News Volume 78, Issue 21

Friday,

Minutes

A failure to distinguish from the outset whether the World War II Historians Club was reenacting “Operation Market Garden” or “Operation Shingle” led to one fistfight and an inadvertent invasion of Belgium.

The Pulse began broadcasting a new line of programming bankrolled by a man known to them only as “Mr. A” and consisting of repeated five digit strings of numbers, recited in Hungarian.

Saturday,

At their fourth convocation, Imagining 18 members B.E.H.A.G.’ed all their S.M.A.R.T. goals, ensuring that, if nothing else, the process will leave SLUH with a surplus of acronyms.

The leadership of So.Il. went into hiding after arrest warrants were issued on both sides of the river against the increasingly radical Illinoisan cultural organization.

Somewhere over Fargo, North Dakota Members of the Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots Club escaped from the closet where they had inadvertently trapped themselves three years before, and immediately expressed their intention to reestablish the club as an active part of the SLUH community.

“I can’t believe nobody came to look for us,” said one club member. “Did they think we just disappeared? I mean, we’re still listed as an extracurricular on the website. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

Though similarly listed, the location of the Seinfeld Club remains unknown; the group was last seen climbing into an air vent and muttering something about a “soup nazi.”

Monday,

A defiant So.Il. statement, made from and undeclared location somewhere in the Metro East, declared illegitimate the governments of both Missouri and Illinois, and reiterated the group’s call for a “greater Southern Illinois,” independent of both states.

A new Pax Christi program was announced.

The initiative, meant to encourage fair trade purchasing, will bus in young schoolchildren to stare disapprovingly at anybody wearing Nike branded products.

artwork | Paul Fister

OPENING Friday, May 23rd Forest Park Grand Tidal Basin

Seeing 80™

“Beginning to see into the 80th volume and dream beyond.”®

Embarking on an infinite journey to imaginatively vision a milestone and beyond!

The goal-articulation process will occur over eight (8) intervals, with four (4) grand convocation galas, two (2) of which will take place at the Kennedy Center for the Arts in Portland, Oregon. Participants will be divided into eight (8) “Imagining groups” at the much smaller sale banquet-jamborees, happening at local yacht and masquerade clubs across South Northwestern Eastern Canada. Over its run, Seeing 80 will wlso feature acronyms, musical guests Steve Martin and Bill Murray, and keynote speakers Chris Christie and Bill O’Reilly.

By Volume 80, The Prep News will be a worldly model for exceptional reporting, writing, and editing in the newsprint industry across the globe.

Tuesday,

The

7

kettő-hét-hét-öt—The Pulse—hat-hat-hat-kettőöt—The Pulse The Dauphin Players announced that, upon a reexamination of the rules of crap and a careful look at their recent performance of Guys and Dolls, debonair gambler Sky Masterson actually lost the crucial dice roll at the climax of the musical, and should not have subsequently won over the herd of crooked gamblers necessary to gain the affections of the lovely but conservative Sarah Brown. A new version, with an amended ending chronicling Masterson’s slide into the bottle and flashy but ultimately meaningless hedonism, will open tonight.

In an attempt to attract more attendees, the Politics Club has decided to exclusively feature topics that president Rob Hayes described as “sexy.”

“Should America gun control all its sports cars?

Can we really afford to insure all of our astronauts? These are questions that politics club should no longer be afraid to address,” said Hayes.

Wednesday,

In an attempt to limit his scoring potential, senior Gabe Newsham took a golf club to the knee of star Ladue Quiz Bowl player Ben Zhang, Tonya Harding style.

“On reflection, physical agility is not that central to quiz bowl,” said Newsham in an exclusive interview with the Prep News. “I guess this wasn’t very well thought through.”

More than 50 students contentedly attended a meeting of NHS, neither complaining about or trying to avoid being active in the organization which they applied to join and voluntarily maintain membership in.

Thursday

Racquetball held its banquet, commemorating this year’s state win, national championship and silver medal in the Sochi Olympics.

A mix-up in courtroom scheduling led SLUH’s mock trial team to head, for an hour-and-a-half, the criminal defense of one Mr. Allen Durer, accused of armed robbery for an attack on a convenience store last month.

Philosophical Debates: like politics club, but with snacks.

A member of Anime Club admitted he is only involved to spice up his college applications.

—Adam Thorp

Pulse—egy-

CREDITS Joe “Sam Chechik” Godar

reporter

8

Prep News

NEWS

March 28, 2014

Volume 78, Issue 21

Musicians Students cram into Commons for conversation on Crimea qualify for Adam Thorp Square, the nucleus of pro- projections about the rap- tive and effective because you be good to find out more too,” state at Solo/ tests against the government idly developing situation in were able to get two different said Chura.

Chura said he remem- Ensemble of Ukrainian president Viktor Crimea. Both guessed that perspectives.”

BY EDITOR IN CHIEF

I

nterest in the developing situation in Crimea (and some generous offers of extra credit) packed students into the Commons on the Thursday of exam week for talks by a pair of people familiar with the situation there: alumni Daniel Schlafly, ’57, and James Hitch, ’67.

Schlafly spoke first. As the director of Russian and East European Studies for St. Louis University, Schlafly has taught the history and politics of the region for years.

Schlafly described his talk as a “brief ride” through Russian and East European history as it relates to Crimea and Ukraine. It was accompanied by a series of related maps and images from the region, projected onto large screens on either end of the Commons.

Schlafly had previously given a similar talk to a smaller group of around 70 SLUH students during the brief war between Russia and Georgia in 2008.

The second speaker, Hitch, spent years in both Ukraine and Russia with the international law firm Baker and McKenzie, and maintains links to both countries.

He said he owns an apartment just off Independence

bered Schlafly’s talk on Georgia before arranging the conference, and hoped he could provide the “more academic side” of the discussion.

Chura said he was also “inspired” in the Imagining 18 Global Education visioning group, which has stressed awareness of world events.

Chura works with Hitch as part of that group.

“This was all happening, and Mr. Hitch was talking about how he’s got friends in Kiev and his own experiences there, and I thought, what a photo | Ben Banet perfect match,” said Chura.

“Mr. Hitch could talk about his own personal experiences, and (had) lived through a lot of the political movements there, so it just kind of seemed like things fell together all at once.”

Hitch is a product of SLUH’s Russian language program; Schlafly graduated before the program began.

Chura said he had not expected the turnout the event attracted; an estimated 300 people attended.

“The way that the social studies department in particular got behind this—several teachers really put out the word to get kids motivated to come—was unbelievable,” Daniel Schlafly, ’57, Director of East European Russian Studies at SLU, gives insights on Crimea. said Chura.

Yanukovych. Some of the actors in the Ukraine crisis were former clients of Hitch’s law firm. He said in his talk that one of these, Ukraine’s acting president, was “a smart young guy” who seemed “sarcastic.”

Hitch came into contact with other Ukrainian politicians at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine, and he showed the group pictures of himself with both Yanukovych and former president Yulia Tymoshenko.

At the end of the talks, both Schlafly and Hitch made

that weekend’s referendum in Ukraine would turn up large majorities for annexation into Russia (speculation that anticipated the actual result).

Schlafly said he expected Crimea would be used as a “bargaining chip” between the United States and Russia. Hitch said he was “really afraid that someone was going to get trigger happy.”

The floor then opened for student questions.

History teacher Tim O’Neil attended the talk, and said, “I think it was informa-

“They were very wellinformed. It was cool to hear about the country from somebody who had been there recently,” said senior Rob Hayes, who is considering a major in international relations.

Russian teacher Robert Chura arranged the talks.

“As the issue became more and more ‘in the news,’ a lot of students—some parents even—everybody was kind of asking me what my take was.

Honestly, I myself didn’t really know; I had my own thoughts about it, but I thought it would

In strong field, Scholar Bowl places 8th at Kewpie annual

BY Matt Godar REPORTER

T

he St. Louis U. High varsity Scholar Bowl team participated in the Kewpie Academic Tournament in Columbia on March 8. The team was fairly successful, as they came in eighth place overall.

Seniors Adam Thorp, Gabe Newsham, and Rob

Hayes were the only three players representing SLUH at this tournament, as opposed to the usual four. Although this seems like a disadvantage, Scholar Bowl coach Frank Corley did not think this was the reason for the team’s standing.

“Another player might have helped a little bit, but we still wouldn’t have been able to beat some of those teams,”

said Corley.

The team made it to the afternoon games, although it was a little bit of a rough end of the day. The team lost twice to Ladue, and also once to Rockbridge, Hickman, and Hallsville. In the morning, however, the team defeated the Hallsville B team, Troy Buchanan, Fatima, and Helias.

“It tells us that we were

right on the cusp of the championship bracket and the top of the second-tier bracket,” said Corley.

“There were a lot of really good teams there, but we did pretty well as a group,” said Hayes.

SLUH will participate in the district tournament on April 12 and will face some of its Scholar Bowl rivals such as Nerinx, Rosati-Kain, Webster,

and St. Mary’s. However, the team to beat in the tournament is Clayton, a team SLUH has met in the championship game before. Clayton usually comes out on top, but Corley thinks this might be the year for SLUH to win.

“Clayton is down this year. For the first time in a long time, we have a chance to win our district,” said Corley.

Yoga club to explore new openness, fitness in spirituality

BY Thomas STAFF

photo | Mr. Diego Navarro

Williams

L

ooking to stretch your comfort zone and your muscles? Then look no further than SLUH’s newly formed Yoga Club.

Senior Patrick Conrey formed the club after he heard about yoga from a friend and decided to try it out.

“Luke Sloan told me yoga was a great exercise, and I was looking to do exercise,” said Conrey. “I decided yoga sounded like a great alternative to running and jumping jacks and the mundanity that is most exercise routines.”

Conrey said the Yoga Club is a group of people dedicated to knowing themselves in a better light, experiencing a new sort of spirituality, and exhibiting an openness to growth.

The first time he tried yoga, Conrey said his fitness instructor helped him realize yoga is also a spiritual experience, not just a physical one. “(Yoga) has helped me

The Yoga club gets to know themselves while also toning muscles on the carpeted floor of J124.

get to know myself better, to experience God in a sort of way that I hadn’t before, to know my faith better, to recognize the Ignatian principle of the extraordinary in the

ordinary things,” said Conrey.

Conrey believes yoga enables a person to be focused on living in a mindset of the moment.

“We are running around

all the time listening for bells and whistles and all those sort of things that dictate what we are going to do next, but what yoga does, and what it does really well and why it contin-

ues to be prevalent, is it gives us a way to make ourselves be present to the moment,” said Conrey.

The word yoga comes from a Sanskrit word yuj, meaning to bind and couple things.

“What you’re binding are all sorts of opposites, what the Eastern philosophies called the polarities of life,” said Conrey. “The physical pose side of yoga couples things like breath with movement and stillness with motion.”

The club, moderated by theology teacher Diego Navarro, had a meeting yesterday. Those who practice yoga are referred to as yogis.

Conrey says that yoga isn’t for everyone, but encourages anyone interested to contact him via email.

“I want it to offer students a chance to, as Alan Watts says, ‘unthink’: the process of calming down, intensive mediation, analyze your life, and stillness,” said Conrey.

BY Rick Garner REPORTER

A

group of eight St. Louis U. High musicians performed exceptionally well this past Saturday at the Solo and Ensemble Festival at Parkway Central.

At the festival, eight SLUH students—juniors Peter Volmert (french horn), Marty Johnson (flute), Andrew Koetting (piano), sophomores Matt Fink (snare drum), Manny de Legarreta (violin), Andrew Groesch (violin), Adam Wilson (cello), and freshman Leonard Kim (clarinet) received a score of on, a perfect score for an exemplary performance.

A student or ensemble of students would enter a room with a judge, play a pre-approved selection of music and receive a grade between one and five, with one being the highest grade possible.

“It’s harder than you think,” said band teacher Jeff Pottinger. “When you enter that room, you have no one to rely on. It’s a solo, even the ensemble pieces really, you are responsible entirely for playing your piece. There’s nothing to hide behind.”

Junior Peter Volmert played “I See a Huntsman” by George Frideric Handel.

“It’s a piece with a lot of ink on the paper,” said Volmert. “There’s a lot going on in it which presented a challenge.”

To prepare for the festival, Volmert worked with a clinician brought in by Pottinger. In addition, the repetition of practice helped to prepare Volmert mentally for the actual performance.

“It was intimidating, but came down to having to trust in my ability and trust in the time I put into it,” said Volmert.

Sophomore Adam Wilson played cello in a string trio that performed a selection from Bach’s “24th Cantata.”

“It was really tense and really, really competitive.

Honestly, you had to be good to get a one. (The judges) don’t just hand out ones to everyone. You had to put in the work and even if you did, you aren’t always going to get a one. It’s really the difference between a single mistake and playing it perfectly,” said Wilson.

In addition to the outstanding performances by students in the Solo and Ensemble Festival, the Symphonic band received ones in all categories at the band festival at Ritenour on Wednesday, March 12.

“You only get one shot when you’re up there, for either a solo or a group. Your heart starts pounding and you start to freak out, it’s a huge confidence check, but that’s what really helps you grow as a musician,” said Pottinger.

Mar. 28, 2014 Vol. 78, Issue 21

SPoRTs

pages 9, 10, 11

Lax soaks up sun in Tampa, wins all three games photo | Mr. Dan Cannon

BY Connor REPORTER

FitzGerald

A

fter being defeated by CBC in the State finals last season, the St. Louis U. High varsity Laxbills have hit the ground running, beating four of their first five opponents.

“Obviously our mission this season is to get back to State and win this year,” said senior captain Jack Kinzel.

“But we’ve still got the whole season in front of us.”

The team’s four captains are seniors Eric Bell, Matt Thomas, Jack Kinzel, and Max Cannon. The team also has 12 newcomers, including one freshman, eight sophomores, two juniors, and one senior.

“I think the rookies bring a young and fun attitude that gives the team an extra jump that helps the team out a lot.

(Sophomores Matt) Schaefer and (Patrick) Broughton both have big roles this season, and they have been performing really well,” said Kinzel.

“The older guys, and the seniors especially, have been awesome in welcoming us new kids,” said sophomore Jack Perryman. “They make sure that we know exactly what to do, and if you don’t do it, they get on you. They’re also big role models, too, be-

T

Senior Ty Burggraf chases down a ball against Belen Jesuit.

cause they have all been in at least one state championship game, and they know what it takes to get there.”

The team started its road to state with the Preseason Varsity Jamboree that took place on March 1. The jamboree was a warm-up tournament in which the teams played 25-minute games with running clocks. The team won

three games and lost one, to DeSmet.

Opening the season at home, SLUH beat Christian Brothers High School from Memphis, Tenn. 8-5.

The team’s only blemish so far this year has been a 12-7 loss on March 13 to a powerful rival, MICDS. After the loss to MICDS, the Laxbills’ only games have

been the tournament in Tampa, Fla. over spring break, facing three other Jesuit schools.

SLUH beat Strake Jesuit from Houston, Tex. 20-6, St. Ignatius College Prep from Chicago 13-9, and Belen Jesuit Preparatory School from Miami 14-3.

“Going to Tampa was a great experience for the team,” said Kinzel, “We got

photo | Ben Banet

Junior Bryan Nolan pitches against Kirkwood on Wednesday, March 26.

A

fter handily winning its first game of the season against McCluer North, the St. Louis U. High baseball squad (1-1) took a beating at the hands of the Kirkwood Pioneers on Wednesday.

Junior Bryan Nolan took

Competition rough for rugby in Dallas

BY Keith Thomas core staff

our game together, and we had some awesome team bonding which will help us a lot in the future.”

The Laxbills play again at home tonight under the lights against Vianney at 7 p.m.

“Being a part of the team has been a really great experience,” said Perryman, “It’s been a lot of hard work but it’s definitely been worth it.”

Baseball battles the cold, starts season 1-1

BY Thomas Riganti core staff

9

Prep News

the mound for the Jr. Bills against Kirkwood and got through the first two innings without giving up a run.

Senior Andrew Waller got the bats started for SLUH in the bottom of the second with a triple to deep left field. On the next at bat, senior Charlie Nester chipped a high bouncer to the pitcher

that trapped Waller heading home. Waller made a dive for the plate but was tagged out as the throw beat him soundly.

Nester got to first on the fielder’s choice.

“He’s going on contact,” said head coach Steve Nicollerat of Waller. “That’s exactly what he’s supposed to do.”

With two outs, junior

Corey Renaud hit a liner to left past the outfielder which gave him a stand-up triple as well as driving in Nester to give SLUH a 1-0 lead.

In the top of the third, Kirkwood hit a bouncer back to Nolan, who could not handle the ball in time as the Pioneer took first base. On the next at bat, a double to the left

field gap tied the game at 1-1.

During the next at bat, senior catcher Mark Cerutti threw out the man on second with a laser that just beat the Kirkwood player as he dove back to the base. Kirkwood replaced that man in scoring position with a stand up double to left field over senior Marcus Ramspott’s head.

After a wild pitch and a two-out walk, Nicollerat brought in senior Michael Blood, who struck out the batter with a breaking ball in the dirt to avert the danger.

Kirkwood peaked in the top of the fourth with a single and a sacrifice bunt that advanced the runner to second.

Kirkwood doubled on a liner to center, sending the man on second to third. A wild throw to third that flew over the third baseman’s head and out of play gave the Pioneers a 2-1 lead.

After advancing the man on second base to third with a bouncer to first, the Pioneers got another break when a wild pitch brought home the man on third and gave Kirkwood a 3-1 lead.

Kirkwood brought in left-handed Thomas Higgins to pitch in the fourth.

In the bottom of the fourth, sophomore John Brinkman hit a high chopper up the middle for a single.

Freshman Donovan Ditto replaced Brinkman on the basepath and took second

continued on page 11

he St. Louis U. High Rugby team had a tough tournament in Dallas two weeks ago, going 1-2 against some of the top teams in the country. The Ruggerbills also defeated rival DeSmet 43-19 on March 14.

SLUH kicked off the weekend in Dallas against host Dallas Jesuit. Dallas had an extremely strong offense in the first half with impressive back play, but the SLUH defense held strong. The score was 0-0 at the end of the first half.

With nine minutes remaining in the game, Dallas passed the ball out wide to the weak side of SLUH’s defense and rushed the ball in for a try. After making the conversion kick, Dallas was up 7-0, which turned out to be the final.

“I came in knowing that Dallas Jesuit was a very strong rugby program,” said coach Chris Keeven. “The (SLUH) defense, whether it was with the back line or even with the forwards, for our first game we played as well as I’ve ever seen us play that early in the season.”

SLUH’s next game was against Regis Jesuit in Denver.

The Ruggerbills jumped to an early lead when senior Josh Keil converted a penalty kick from about 30 yards out, giving the Bills a 3-0 lead early in the first half.

Senior and first-year player Sam Chevalier had a breakout game. Chevalier broke free for a 60-yard run late in the first half before being tackled deep in the Regis zone. He dished the ball to fellow senior Will Kernell for the try, putting the Bills up 10-0 with Keil’s conversion.

The Ruggerbills’ scoring streak did not stop there.

Chevalier was able to run around the Regis defense with less than a minute remaining in the first half for a try. Keil remained perfect, and the score was 17-0 at halftime.

With 11:30 left in the second half, Chevalier kept his scoring streak going with another try, and with the conversion, the Ruggerbills continued their dominance over Regis with a 24-0 score. Regis answered quickly, though, and made their conversion, making the score 24-7.

However, the Ruggerbills were not done there.

Senior Adam Cooley pushed through the Regis defense for a try, and with Keil’s conversion, the score was 31-7—the final score.

The win was the cleanest of the Jr. Bills’ short season so far, showing dominance on both sides of the ball.

“We just continued playing well,” said Keeven. “Because we were able to keep

continued on page 10

10

Prep News

SPORTS

March 28, 2014

Volume 78, Issue 21

First-year players shine in the Lone-Star State tournament photo | Thomas Williams

(continued from page 9) up the level of intensity and athleticism, we were able to continue to win.”

The Jr. Bills played in the consolation championship against an extremely large Union squad from Tulsa, one of the biggest challenges that the Ruggerbills have faced so far this season.

Early in the first half, Union was awarded a penalty kick, and the Union kicker punted the ball deep in SLUH’s zone for a lineout.

Union won the lineout, and dished it to the back line who walked in for a try to go up 7-0.

Union replied with another quick try, swinging the ball out to the right side and pushing through the SLUH line. The conversion was missed, and Union was up by twelve.

The SLUH backs were able to break through for a long run, but were brought down by the Union defense late in the first half. The Jr. Bills were awarded a penalty for offsides, and opted to take a penalty kick with Keil, who had so far been perfect on the weekend. The kick went just wide left, and the score remained 12-0 Union.

Union went in for another try late in the first half off of a penalty, and at halftime, the score was 19-0 Union.

“I thought we came out flat that morning,” said Keeven.

Senior Sam Chevalier tears past three Union defenders in Dallas. The Jr. Bills went on to fall 40-3 to the much bigger, more experienced Union team.

The Jr. Bills came out with a fire in the second half and were deep in the Union zone threatening for a try 30 seconds into the half. The Union defense wouldn’t budge, and the Jr. Bills opted to go for the penalty kick, putting the Ruggerbills on the board, 19-3, with Keil’s conversion.

Union wasn’t done with their scoring, though. Union pushed through with a try with 24 minutes left in the half, and scored again on the kickoff return, to go ahead 33-3. After one more score, Union won 40-3.

“The game felt like a fight, and we were not rephoto | Thomas Williams

Senior Josh Keil goes up for a lineout pass against Union.

ally in a fighting mood,” said Keeven. “We had a couple of injuries that the coaches were trying to manage, and I think some of the team picked up on that, and instead of coming out ready to go at it, they came out trying to conserve themselves.”

After a few days of rest, the Jr. Bills were back at it again, facing Jesuit rival DeSmet. The game was one of the most important for the Jr. Bills because of the rivalry and long tradition between the two teams.

Senior Dan Stelzer put the Jr. Bills the board first.

Stelzer has been a strong breakout player this year as a first-year player for the Jr. Bills.

Shortly after, the Jr. Bills scored with Chevalier’s dish to senior Reid Gillam. The try was a result of good support from Gillam, and the Jr. Bills went ahead 12-0.

After a DeSmet try, SLUH answered with a try from senior captain J.J. Driscoll putting the Bills up 17-7. The Ruggerbills kept their hot streak going, swinging the ball out to the outside for senior Alex Ferrara to walk in for a try. Kernell was able to make a nice conversion, and the Bills were now up 24-7.

After Cooley’s try off of a dirty lineout, senior Michael Dempster was able to run with the ball on the wing with an assist from Driscoll for another try, and the Ruggerbills were up 36-7. DeSmet answered, changing the score to 36-14.

Driscoll was given a yellow card, but that proved no trouble for the rolling Jr. Bills.

Kernell picked off a DeSmet pass at midfield, and dished the ball to senior Sam Sykora

for the try. DeSmet answered, but it was too little and too late for the Spartans, as the Jr. Bills picked up the win 43-19.

“The DeSmet game showed that our fitness is certainly paying off,” said Stelzer.

“We are a better unit than we were at the beginning of February.”

“The guys were working together, and we were able to adjust to injuries,” said Keeven. “When you combine the athleticism that we have on our team with the understanding of how the game works, things started to work the way that we want them to the entire time.”

Under Kirk, young Tennisbills look to conquer Westminster

BY Charlie REPORTER

W

Mueth

ith new coach Brian Kirk at the helm, St. Louis U. High’s varsity tennis team is ready to begin a new season this afternoon at Westminster.

Kirk, who has coached several high school sports in his career and has served as a tennis instructor, is very excited to coach at SLUH. “We have a great group of kids that work hard, a lot of depth, and a lot of good players,” said Kirk. “We are looking forward to a very good season.”

“We have definitely had a bit of a change in coaching styles,” said senior Danny Schneller. “Our old coach, Mark Hoppenjans, played for the University of Illinois in the eighties when they were really good. He knew more about the game from a technical standpoint than a lot of people do. Now we are shifting to Coach Kirk, who knows high school sports and high school tennis better than Coach Hoppenjans did.”

Despite losing No. 1 seed Mike Essma and No. 3 seed David Mayhall to graduation, several players such as Schneller, junior Kyle

Schnell, sophomores Vinny Bartholomew and David Lord, and seniors John Sullivan, Kevin Benben, and Nick Thomas, will return with varsity experience.

“We are looking at a really solid team,” said Schneller.

“We are really deep. We don’t have a ton of seniors, but we have a lot of talent.”

Last night, Kirk announced the lineup for the team’s first match. Schneller will lead off at No. 1 singles followed—in order—by Bartholomew, Schnell, Sullivan, Lord, and Benben to round out the six singles spots.

The doubles lineup will have Schnell and Schneller at the No. 1 spot, Bartholomew and Sullivan at No. 2, and Benben and Thomas at No. 3.

“I am expecting us to be a pretty good team,” said Kirk. “We are young but with a lot of talent. I am expecting to have a very good season where we compete for the conference championship.”

The team will play its first match this afternoon at 4:00 p.m. at Westminster. Next week, the Jr. Bills will play on Tuesday, April 1 against Marquette and Wednesday, April 2 against Ladue; both matches will be at the Dwight Davis Tennis Center at 4:00 p.m.

SPORTS

March 28, 2014

Prep News Volume 78, Issue 21

Track captures first place in Gateway Invitational

BY Will Smith and Michael Sit SPORTS EDITOR, REPORTER

T

he St. Louis U. High track team didn’t show much rust in their first meet of the year, grabbing a first place trophy at the Gateway Invitational.

SLUH’s track team made the short trip to Wash. U. early Saturday morning for the Gateway Invitational meet.

It was a cold, windy morning, but that didn’t stop SLUH from bringing home the gold with 161 total team points.

The second place team, St. Charles, finished with 103 points. The Jr. Bills scored in every event at the meet.

Individual first place finishes included senior Raymond Wingo in the 100-m eter dash, senior Alex Peraud in the pole vault, junior Shayn Jackson in the steeple chase, junior Jack Sullivan in the 3200, and the 4x100 relay team.

“Winning the meet was nice, but not everyone was running with all their guys because some people didn’t have enough practices over

spring break so it wasn’t the whole field of competition,” said head coach Joe Porter.

“I think we did well, but there will be harder competitors in the future, so we will get a better feel for the competition then,” said senior captain Alex Peraud.

The wind and cold in the morning affected most competitors, causing many to come in with lackluster performances.

“Weather is always a factor for meets, especially early in the season but we were prepared with enough clothes to keep us warm and win on the track” said senior captain Michael Swan.

“This meet showed we still have a lot of room to improve, but it’s the first meet and you can’t expect perfection,” said Swan. “We were still able to go out there and take care of business, and I couldn’t have imagined a better way to start the season.”

The JV and C competitors also got a chance to get some marks early in the season at a meet hosted by SLUH on Wednesday. The meet included SLUH, DeSmet, and CBC and wasn’t scored.

“The meet was more about new guys learning how a meet works,” said Porter.

“They get some experience with the order of events and the rules, and they get some first marks to improve upon.”

The next meet is the MCC Relay on Wednesday April 2nd here at SLUH.

Ultimate has sights on elusive state crown

BY Marty STAFF

D

Johnson

on’t be alarmed if a white object zips by your head on the grounds of SLUH; it’s most likely the St. Louis U. High Ultimate Frisbee team practicing.

After coming up short in the State semifinals last year against Francis Howell Central, the Jr. Bills are still looking for that elusive State title. The Jr. Bills, however, are not frustrated by years past.

Rather, they are determined to make this year the year they win it all and believe they have the talent to do so. SLUH returns with several key players from last year’s team including the senior trio of David and Michael Kasper and Luke Carron.

“The Kasper twins have been around since freshman year; they’re our leaders,” said coach Henry Sudnerman.

“Luke Carron brings the intensity on (defense) and gets

our team going.”

Led by this trio, the Frisbills started off the season with a 15-11 win over Francis Howell Central. Though this was only the first game of the season, both David Kasper and Sudnerman liked what they saw.

“It was a pretty close game, but I thought we played well. (Junior) Matt Barron and Luke Carron both played well,” said Kasper.

“I liked our patience with the disc on offense and our good high intensity plays on defense,” Sudnerman said.

While the Frisbills are undefeated so far, they realize the road to State championship glory is long and difficult.

The Frisbills will have to beat a potent Priory team and a DeSmet team that has won the past six state titles.

“They will have a good team,” said Sudnerman in regards to SLUH’s Jesuit counterpart.

Baseball loses to Kirkwood 7-1

Photo | Ben Banet

(continued from page 9) on a groundout from Waller.

SLUH stranded Ditto in scoring position with a strikeout

by Nester to end the inning.

Kirkwood’s senior pitcher Thomas Higgins threw hard, and SLUH struggled all afternoon to get offensive production started.

“When they brought in that lefty, he kind of just shut us down,” said senior Luke Robinson. “We had a hard time catching up to him, and he got ahead in all of his counts.”

“He had a pretty quick motion,” said senior shortstop John Ceriotti. “He was kind of quick pitching us. It was kind of hard to get our timing.”

Sophomore John Brinkman took Blood’s place on the mound in the top of the fifth and got through the inning without allowing a baserunner thanks to senior Alex Webb’s infield work at second base.

In the bottom of the inning, Renaud drew a full count walk to start off. Two strikeouts followed but Ceriotti singled to right to move Renaud to second. However, SLUH stranded the runner and went to the top of the sixth down 3-1.

In the sixth, Kirkwood increased the lead to 5-1 with a two-out double deep in the left field gap, driving home two.

“They were just finding

Freshman Donovan Ditto leads off from first against Kirkwood Wednesday afternoon.

all the holes in the field,” said Robinson.

In the bottom of the inning, Brinkman got on base again, but a strikeout and lineout were of no help to the Jr. Bills as they only had three outs left as the game headed into the seventh.

Kirkwood had tacked on two more runs off sophomore pitcher Tyler Frederking to give them a 7-1 lead.

Ramspott tried to fire up the Jr. Bill bats with a one-out single in the bottom of the seventh, but it was not enough as SLUH fell 7-1.

“I think we hit the ball well,” said Nicollerat. “When

we did hit it well, we weren’t as fortunate as we would have liked.”

“I thought we hit pretty well against the kid who threw for the first three,” said Robinson.

“It wasn’t timely like Kirkwood. Kirkwood had some big timely hits, and that’s how they generated their runs,” said Ceriotti.

Nicollerat attributed the loss to Kirkwood’s hit placement and a few blunders the Jr. Bills made.

“You’ve got to make your own breaks,” said Nicollerat.

“We also made some crucial mistakes too. We have to

know where the baseball is.”

“Ironically, the plays that we make mistakes on, in most cases, are not new plays,” said Nicollerat. “We practice all of them.”

Fortunately for SLUH, this early season loss gives the Jr. Bills something to look back on.

“We’ll become a more aware team,” said Nicollerat.

“There’s a lot of subtle things you take from every game.”

SLUH’s next few games will be today at 4:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. and Saturday at 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. at Sheridan Stadium as part of the Jesuit classic.

Volleyball starts season against Vianney tonight

BY Jack Godar CORE STAFF

S

tanding tall under the tutelage of head coach Jim Gioia, the Volleybills are back and gunning for state with scrappy play and spikes hard enough to aggravate the New Madrid fault line.

“Every year here we hope to compete for a State title and that’s a very realistic goal for us this year,” Gioia said.

“We want to make a State run and we want to do well in the MCC.” The Jr. Billikens will field a very experienced team this year, returning nine players from last year’s team, including seven seniors. However, the Volleybills are hurt by the loss of Tom Beckmann, who was one of the best offensive players in Missouri last year.

“One challenge we will

have is figuring out who’s going to take over that role offensively,” Gioia said of the loss of Beckmann. “It might not just be one guy, it might be multiple guys, which is quite possible.”

Some of the key players for this year’s team will be senior hitter Eric Ottenlips, senior libero Nick Venhaus, and junior setter Ryan Abeln.

Seniors Ben Steinhart and Adam Young will also provide key contributions to the Jr. Bills. Gioia also is expecting big things from sophomore hitter Shawn Hughes, who played on varsity as a freshman last year.

“He’s a pretty unique talent. We’ll be looking for a lot from him this year,” said Gioia.

This year, the Volleybills are less vertically inclined, so

grit and hustle are crucial to this team’s success.

“We have to be scrappy this year because we don’t have as much height as we have in the past years, so we can’t let any ball just hit that floor without laying out for it,” Steinhart said.

Team chemistry will be vital to the team this year.

“I want us to be a team that is tight-knit, I want us to be a team that supports each other,” Gioia said. “I don’t know how many high school teams think about that, but that’s what’s important to me.”

Gioia also wants his team to approach games in a cold and rational manner, not viewing the other team as humans, but rather as an obstacle that the team must overcome.

“One of the things I’ve encouraged them once or

twice to think about is to see the opposition just as a problem that we need to solve,” Gioia said. “My hope is that we don’t carry too much stress or anxiety or fear, but instead just say ‘hey, how are we going to solve this problem?’”

One such impediment is that Vianney, slated to be one of the best teams in the area, has moved into the same class as SLUH this year, after playing in a lower class the year before.

SLUH will find out just how much a challenge Vianney will pose very soon, as the season begins tonight at 5:30 p.m. at the Danis Field House against the Golden Griffins.

“It’s going to be pretty intense,” Steinhart said. “We’re looking to come out and beat them and make a strong statement to start the season.”

Nightbeat

Photo | Mr. James Eberle

Junior Sean Eberle unleashes the frisbee.

11

Jr. Rugby Bills defeat CBC Cadets 56-10

Photo | Patrick Enderle

To the left: Drew Mudd carries the ball followed by Mark Rieke, Sam Sykora, Sam Chevalier, and Michael Dempster to the very right.

12

DINGUS

Prep News Volume 78, Issue 21

Friday, March 7 Members of Film Club watched the animated Disney musical Fantasia. After school today, they will watch the psychological horror film Jacob’s Ladder.

Saturday, March 8 Mother’s Club hosted its annual Mother/Son Trivia Night.

Quiz Bowl traveled to Columbia, Mo. for its last tournament of the season. In a strong field at the yearly Kewpie Academic Tournament, SLUH placed eighth out of 18 teams. See article on p. 5 of this week’s Prep News.

March 28, 2014

Friday, March 28

Minutes this week’s Prep News.

Mock Trial argued the defense case in regional competition against MICDS, and learned the results from both of the regional matches. SLUH lost against both MICDS and Clayton, winning only one of three ballots in each match.

SLUH will not enter this year’s State competition. See article on p. 8 of this week’s Prep News.

Senior Tom Fields became the Missouri State champion in the Poetry Out Loud contest on the strength of his recitation of three poems. This is Fields’ second trip to the state finals in Jefferson City. See article on p. 1 of this week’s Prep News.

Yoga Club, spearheaded by senior Patrick Conrey, held its first meeting.

Sunday, March 9 Chorus held a late winter concert with a focus on Gospel music. The concert included the song Band of Angels and was headlined by RolFriday, March 14 lin’ with Rollo, a song written Robotics Club’s revival

by Rollo Dilworth, ’87, who was marked by its entry into prepared the performance at a the FIRST Robotics Competiclinic for SLUH’s chorus. tion Regional Championship at the Chaifetz arena. Robots Monday, March 10 and their operators competed Thomas à Kempis met to by shooting a ball through have Mass in the North Amer- a goal in brief matches. The ican Martyrs’ Chapel. competition continued into the next day. See article on p. 2 Tuesday, March 11 of this week’s Prep News.

Mock Trial began regionStudents For Life held a al competition against Clay- vigil outside of a local planned ton, last year’s State champion. parenthood clinic as part of SLUH was plaintiff. the archdiocese’s 40 Days for Life campaign. See article on Wednesday, March 12 p. 4 of this week’s Prep News.

Symphonic and Concert band went to Ritenour High Wednesday, March 19 School for a band festival.

Nine Russian students The symphonic band received arrived at SLUH from St. Peperfect scores from each of tersburg, Russia, as part of a the four judges who reviewed long-standing exchange protheir performance. gram. While in St. Louis, they visited local museums, the St. Thursday, March 13 Louis Arch, and a Blues hockSLUH hosted two alumni ey game. speakers on the developing situation in Ukraine. Daniel Saturday, March 22 Schlafly, ’57, the director of Band had a strong showSt. Louis University’s Eastern ing at the District Solo and European and Russian Stud- Ensemble music festival at ies, briefly ran through the Parkway Central. See article on regional history leading up p. 8 of this week’s Prep News. to the situation. James Hitch, ’67, who worked in Russia and Monday, March 24 Ukraine for the international Thomas à Kempis met to law firm Baker and McKenzie, read chapters fourteen and fiffocused on the contemporary teen of The Imitation of Christ. situation. See article on p. 8 of

Tuesday, March 25 Politics Club met to discuss Russian-American relations. Some attendees argued that Russia’s actions in Crimea are a symptom of a supposedly timid American foreign policy during the presidency of Barack Obama. Others challenged the argument, pointing out that the analogous Russian invasion of Georgia was not preempted by the Bush administration.

Members gradually slipped from discussing policy to discussing politics, and the second half of the meeting focused on the Democrats’ loose control of the Senate and the prospects of Hillary Clinton’s still hypothetical presidential campaign. Junior Nick Perryman argued that she could not be successful maintaining what he saw as an emphasis on climate change. Senior Rob Hayes was confident that support from middle class voters would give her an excellent chance.

Latin aspects like history and culture.

Thursday, March 27 Outdoor Adventure Club planned its mountain bike trip to Colorado and Utah, which will occur sometime in July.

The World War Two History Club postponed a talk by Don Green, a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, due to a death in his family. Junior Nathan Price said he planned to reschedule the talk.

Yoga Club had a meeting today. See article on p. 8 of this week’s Prep News.

The Sustainability Committee met to discuss spring projects. Among ideas discussed were Car Free Day, a ride-reduction program and contest, as well as a video to teach community members and guests what can be composted, and work in the community garden.

Freshman Pastoral Team met to plan for its fourth class Mass and its upcoming prayer service and discuss its recent service project at Gateway Greening.

Students for Life gathered to consider spring projects and end-of-the year events. One idea thrown out, somewhat jokingly, was having a “Life Pig Roast” on the upper field. They also discussed ways to publicize the two upcoming guest speakers. Regan Nielsen will give a presentation next Wednesday, April 2, during activity period in 215c. She works for Vitae Foundation, which seeks to educate the public on the sanctity of human life. The following Wednesday, April 9, a speaker from Thrive, a St. Louis organization that spreads abortion information and provides free women’s medical services, will come to SLUH as well. A few of the people who went to the 40 Days for Life also gave short reflections.

Wednesday, March 26 Technical problems and low attendance prevented a scheduled viewing and discussion of a BBC documentary on overpopulation by the Philosophical Debates Club.

Today, the club will collaborate with Film Club to host a viewing of the psychological horror movie Jacob’s Ladder.

Principal John Moran met with Pax Christi members, who proposed a more aggressive policy promoting sweatshop-free apparel around SLUH. Staycation distributed Staycation-themed apparel at its meeting.

The Urban Agriculture Club met for the first time.

The meeting was targeted towards people interested in working with SLUH’s community garden.

Theatre for Social Change was canceled due to lack of student participation.

Latin students met on this day and the next two days —compiled by Adam to talk about an event that will Thorp, Stephen Lumetta, Leo occur tomorrow. This event Heinz, and Sam Chechik will involve students teaching grade school children basic

Photo of the Week

photo | Leo Heinz, Sam Beckmann

8:15am AP

4pm 4:30pm

5pm 5:30pm 6:30pm 7pm 10pm

Schedule R Lent Adoration Senior Class Mass Snack–Bosco Sticks V/JV Tennis @ Westminster V Baseball vs. Loyola Academy of Wilmette, IL C Lacrosse vs. Vianney JV Water Polo vs. Kirkwood JV Volleyball vs. Vianney JV Lacrosse vs. Vianney V Water Polo vs. Kirkwood V Volleyball vs. Vianney V Lacrosse vs. Vianney JV Inline Hockey vs. Seckman Lunch special–Pasta Bar Vegetarian–Shrimp Bites

Saturday, March 29 JV Water Polo @ Chaminade JV Invitational 8am Father/Son Day of Service 10am V Baseball vs. St. Ignatius of Chicago, IL 1pm V Baseball vs. St. Ignatius of Chicago, IL 3pm JV Inline Hockey vs. Oakville 8pm V Inline Hockey vs. Holt

Sunday, March 30 9:30am 10am 12pm 1pm 3:30pm

Grandparents’ Mass JV Inline Hockey vs. Seckman V Inline Hockey vs. CBC JV Ultimate Frisbee vs. Parkway South Ulimate Frisbee vs. Parkway South

Monday, March 31 AP 3:30pm 4:15pm 4:30pm

5pm 5:30pm

6pm 6:30pm

Schedule R

Snack–Chicken Giggles V/JV Golf vs Chaminade C Baseball vs. Clayton JV Water Polo vs. CBC JV Volleyball vs. Ft. Zumwalt South V Rugby vs. St. Louis Priory V Water Polo vs. CBC V Volleyball vs. Ft. Zumwalt South Advisory Committee for Student Affairs JV Rugby vs. St. Louis Priory Lunch special–Chinese special Vegetarian–Pasta Primivera

Tuesday, April 1 9am AP 4pm

4:15pm

4:30pm 5pm 6pm 8:30pm

Schedule R V Golf @ Greg Bantle Memorial Golf Tournament Snack–Bosco Sticks V/JV Tennis vs. Marquette JV Volleyball vs. Mehlville C Baseball vs. Parkway Central B Baseball vs. Westminster V Baseball vs. Hancock V Lacrosse @ Eureka V Volleyball vs. Mehlville JV Lacrosse @ Eureka V Inline Hockey vs. Vianney Lunch Special–Hand breaded chicken strips Vegetarian–Brown rice

Wednesday, April 2 8:15am 8:30am AP 3:30pm 4pm

4:15pm 4:30pm

5pm 5:30pm

Lent Adoration STUCO Blood Drive Snack–Turnovers JV/V Golf vs. CBC V Tennis vs. Ladue JV Tennis @ Ladue V Track–MCC Relays B Baseball vs. Chaminade V Baseball @ Chaminade C Baseball @ Fox JV Volleyball vs. Chaminade V Water Polo @ MICDS V Volleyball vs. Chaminade Lunch Special–Brunch for Lunch Vegetarian–Olive Oil Cavatelli

Schedule R

Thursday, April 3 Parent-Teacher Conferences 4:15pm C Baseball vs. MICDS

Half Day

Basketball Wins Sportsmanship Award SLUH was recently awarded the MCC Conference Sportsmanship award from the International Association of Approved Basketball Officials (IAABO). The award is voted on by the basketball referees and recognizes a team for its sportmanship on and off the court.